Our Battered American

I am meeting a few battered Americans these days. There are not many left, but those that are seem to sound alike. Yes, I think I am beginning to understand Mr. Battered American, and he sounds tired and a bit like this.

“I’m sorry Mr. President, but we are just not dictatorial in the Middle East. You said the Saudis, not America, showed courage over there. But, Mr. President, the Saudis, they live under Sharia law! And my God!—they once engineered crippling oil boycotts against our nation. And wasn’t it they who produced 15 of the 19 killers on 9/11? So no, Mr. President, those Saudis—they simply are not courageous. Now Mr. Biden, there is no reason to set the reset button on foreign policy, as you promised all those Europeans. None at all. Tell that resetting stuff instead to Ahmadinejad, Chavez, that Korean nut, Putin, and all the other thugs who kill and cause misery, but not to our America that saves and feeds and helps. Mrs. Clinton, it’s now your turn. We are not impulsive as you told the world. So you can stop apologizing for America’s recent behavior—unless you think the world would be a better place with the Taliban, and Saddam and his two boys in power. Or maybe Europe should have Schroeder and Chirac back, or Libya with nuclear weapons, or Khalid Sheik Mohammed freed from Guantanamo. Or maybe America shouldn’t have given that $15 billion for AIDs relief in Africa, or helped with earthquakes in Pakistan and tsunamis in Indonesia. Now all that was sorta impulsive.”

As he thinks about this apology business, the battered American always gets a little angrier, “And another thing. Mr. Holder, I’ve never said or done a racist thing in my life, not one. Always supported equal opportunity, always will. So don’t call me a “coward” or my countrymen “cowards,” not when you’re my Attorney General. You are The Attorney General of the United States of America, so please, no more playing Al Sharpton or Jesse Jackson, leveling the latest shake-down charge on television. That’s not really in your job description to call your own countrymen “cowards.” When I was in high school I was taught that name-calling like that might be what they said was “projection.” So maybe, just maybe, you have been cowardly—and arrogant too—but not those whom you accused of all that. At least if someone asked me to help pardon a fugitive on the FBI’s most wanted list, I would have said “no.” Always, no exceptions, period! Anything else? That would be cowardly.”

Our battered American I noticed gets even more riled up and would say to our new energy secretary, “And another thing Mr. Chu, California isn’t going anywhere. What’s this dry up and blow away nonsense? You’re our Energy Secretary, not Jimmy Carter in his cardigan sweater or Al Gore doing interviews on that private jet. So Americans aren’t going to “vanish” in rural California. We’re proud that we created, by blood, and hard work, and suffering, the richest agricultural valleys in the world. They won’t disappear soon—at least not if you allow us to have the water that our great-grandfathers tapped and brought down from the Sierra, instead of letting it run full blast into the sea so that Speaker Pelosi’s mice can live more nicely in the bay than we do on our farms.”

I think this battered American would also say, “Mr. President, I passed on buying that bigger house. When I wanted to refinance and put in that extra room, I also backed out, since I couldn’t meet that additional $400 a month on the debt. I never flipped a house; I never missed a mortgage payment; and I never took out a second, third, or fourth mortgage either. I didn’t even know there were such crazy things. So please don’t tell me that the 93% of us that played by our grandfathers’ rules are obligated to come to the rescue of the 7%, who did the exact opposite. At one of your town meetings, just one, instead of pandering to those who defaulted, ask one of us to stand up for paying our debts and then say to the crowd, “Give a hand to Mrs. Battered American. She pays her mortgage, so the rest of us don’t have to!” Try that just once.”

Mrs. Battered American would go on, “I have two credit cards, and only use one, and it is not maxed out. And when I hear the radio blaring to renegotiate my mortgage, to renounce my credit card debt, or stick it to the IRS, I turn it off. I was raised to pay what I owe—or not to borrow the money in the first place. I never thought what I make today I would necessarily always make tomorrow, and so I did not go into debt on the chance that our government—other Americans—should pay off what I charged.”

“I tried to put away a little away for college, Mr. President. Just a bit for tuition and such. But when I did, my kids no longer qualified for loans, and scholarships and federal help. So, yes, I want more education. But we are in debt for over a trillion dollars this year, and maybe, just once, you might advise us to pass on that big-screen television, that digital camera, and instead put a tiny bit away for our girls’ tuition, or our boys’ books, so others won’t have to.”

“And Mr. President,” the battered American would add, “When I add up my federal income tax, my state income tax, my Medicare, and my Social Security taxes, I am paying half my income to the government. Wait— far more than half my income, when I figure in my sales and property and car taxes. My accountant, when I can afford one, tells me to pay, not dodge, what I owe. And, oh, Mr. President I am so tired of all those taxes, so tired, but I am so lawful as well. And so I pay the bill, all of it. Every dime. Unlike your Treasury Secretary, who runs the IRS, I never cheat. I don’t write off my kid’s camp as a business expense—hell, I don’t even send him to camp in the first place. And unlike your cabinet nominee Mr. Daschle, I don’t have a limousine. And if I got a free one, I would think someone had to pay for it. If used it every day, why shouldn’t I pay taxes on it? And unlike your Labor Secretary nominee, I have no liens on my property, Mr. President. But if I did, I’d pay them off before you nominated me—or bow out if I didn’t.”

This battered American would remember all that—I’ve seen it happen—and get angrier, “Mr. President, I have never been nominated for much, but when I did serve someone or something, I never bowed out like Mr. Richardson, because the government was never investigating whether or not I was a crook. Sorry, never happened.”

Finally, Mr. Battered American would snap back to Mr. President: “I played by the rules, and put a little away in my 401(k). I knew the risks, not because the broker, the bank, or the firm told me all the risks, but because I never shook hands with any of them or even knew those who took my money and promised it was safe—and so I was never sure it really was. And I lost 30% of it. I will live by that too. But please, don’t tell me I must pay for AIG, and the state of California, and all those who charged too much on their VISAs. Just take more of my money in taxes to do all that—but, again, please, no more lectures that I have to, that I must, that I am obligated to. And no more of your team’s lecturing me about being patriotic in paying my taxes, and unpatriotic in not wanting to borrow more trillions that my kids’ kids will have to pay back.”

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1.
Pops in Vienna

Wow Doc….you wax rhapsodic. You’ll get a lot of comments connected with this article.

Yes, indeed, I think most of us are getting pretty tired of getting beaten up and scolded by a bunch of sanctimonious Leftist.

Hard to believe that we’re being called cowards about race when we have a black president and a black attorney general. My goodness, aren’t most of our major cities run by black mayors?

Obama warned the American electorate about his underlying beliefs when we discovered that his pastor preferred “God damn America” to the phrase we all learned early on. O’s wife called the US a “mean country.” Yet a majority of Americans preferred O to an authentic war hero. I share Hanson’s thoughts. My quibble with him is that he spares those Americans who have put their country (and the rest of us) in a very battered state.

This is the administration of resentment and entitlement.
They resent that we don’t need them, and they feel entitled to hurt us until we do.
In other words – you nailed it.
America needs a restraining order against this administration.

Just take more of my money in taxes to do all that—but, again, please, no more lectures that I have to, that I must, that I am obligated to.

That said, just where does that obligation end for patriotic/angry/battered Americans?

I mean it’s not as if this Adminstration intends to even curtail this fiscal lunacy and political chicannery; they’re obviously going after control of the whole Magilla.

The staff aides who wrote the “trillion dollar bill that no one got to read” must be exstatic. Whoa, can you believe we actually got that passed?

And, if they don’t get all they want this pass, they’ll take a bite at each and every opportunity, inexorably. How can we stop it, pronto? Peacefully?

Reaching across the aisle – bipartisanship – hogwash. Just different words for “compromise” and “appeasement” and graft-enabling.

The problem with any appeasement or compromise between conservative and progresive interests, is the tranzis gain some amount of what they want every time, never to be relinquished. Conservatives lose in every deal we agree to.

This was one of the most invigorating pieces I’ve read here in a long while. Bravo on expressing the righteous anger that so many of us feel at those who are squandering our wealth and international standing in pursuit of ephermal and irrational goals.

Exactly right. My wife and I passed on buying our first house when we were offered a loan for much more than we’d ever earned to buy in what we recognized was an inflated market. We still live in an apartment but we don’t need a bailout and have no sympathy for those who think they do.

Between the racist, classist President, AG, and Congress, the crooked Treasury Secretary and other officials, and the greedy, grasping citizens who support them and allow themselves to be bought and sold, I have never felt so disappointed in the government and some of the people of the United States.

I see that you didn’t care for my “Jesus has industrial disease ” remarks, along with Zebra’s “The La La Song” on your previous blog.
Here’s one by Traffic. You see there is nothing new.

If you see something that looks like a star
And it’s shooting up out of the ground
And your head is spinning from a loud guitar
And you just can’t escape from the sound
Don’t worry too much, it’ll happen to you
We were children once, playing with toys

And the thing that you’re hearing is only the sound
Of the low spark of high-heeled boys

The percentage you’re paying is too high-priced
While you’re living beyond all your means
And the man in the suit has just bought a new car
From the profit he’s made on your dreams
But today you just read that the man was shot dead
By a gun that didn’t make any noise
But it wasn’t the bullet that laid him to rest
Was the low spark of high-heeled boys

If you had just a minute to breathe
And they granted you one final wish
Would you ask for something like another chance
Or something similar as this
Don’t worry too much, it’ll happen to you
As sure as your sorrows or joys

And the thing that disturbs you is only the sound
Of the low spark of high-heeled boys

High-heeled boys

If I gave you everything that I owned
And asked for nothing in return
Would you do the same for me as I would for you
Or take me for a ride
And strip me of everything, including my pride
But spirit is something that no one destroys

And the sound that I’m hearing is only the sound
Of the low spark of high-heeled boys
Heeled boys

Eric Holder was playing to the crowd when he gave that Americans as cowards quip. Some think that it was a set up to ask for reparations. If that is so, then maybe he can replay his challenge at the cemetery at Gettysburg. It sounds like “race-baiting” to me, or as Tom Wolfe wrote, he was “Mau-Mauing the flack catchers.”
The apologist fear mongering looks to be the bi-polar of hope and change. Throwing trillions out the window is lunatic. Does one have to destroy the nation in order to convert it to a single party socialist state? The 53% of voters who thought that this was the future that they wanted might now question their portfolios.

Sitting here, not so idly daydreaming of the Bidens, Burrises, Dodds, Franks, Holders, Richardsons, and others including, yes, the Obamas, being torn down in mid-smirk from their arrpgant, high places and thrown to the ground. If that kind of anger can be tapped and channeled by a demagogic, 30′s style political leader…..perhaps the nations’s future is not in the hands of limp-wristed Leftists so much as a frightening Rightest.

Thanks, President Bush. Thanks, Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals. If you want to see something that’s been battered (but by ‘free markets’ and ‘property rights’), come to this guy’s mountain, or my great-grandpa’s mountain, in West Virginia.

Exactly right. “Much, much angrier.” Everyone senses it, don’t they? Something’s afoot, but what? And yes, of course you must destroy the nation in order to create a new, single-party socialist state! This is why I wept on Election Night. “Freedom is only one generation away from extinction.” Are we going to let that happen?

Viewed from the right, the Democrats never disappoint. Blinded by their anti-American ideology, they continue to misread average Americans. Most are politically moderate, and not given to being lectured, on race or any other subject, by the likes of AG Holder. I don’t think they’ll tolerate for long being used as the proverbial pinata in this children’s game the Obama Administration is playing. A backlash is coming.

With the election of our first AA president, maybe it’s time we cancel Black History Month (yeah, it’s February. I had to look it up too), and replace it with a generic Oppressed Peoples Month. You know, next year February would be Jewish History Month, where we require all students in public education at all levels to learn about the Holocaust and Israel’s fight for survival. The following year, my vote goes for Irish History Month. Of course, the way things are going, three years from now — February 2012 — would have to be Battered-American History month, where we can reflect on the disasterous Obama years right before we vote him out of office.

The Bush tax cuts will expire at the end of 2010, at which point my federal taxes will go up. I have to prepare for that now.

This IS a zero-sum game. You tax it away from me, I can’t invest it or spend it. The Battered American has lost most of his personal capital, and the idea of starting a small business, or making a major home improvement, is a receding dream. I don’t know anyone who isn’t cutting back on everything, from groceries to water use to driving, running the heat, and phone or cable service. I do know people who were preparing to launch small businesses last year, and now have decided they can’t take the risk.

No, we needn’t feel sorry for the Battered American on this head. But we should pause to think about all the poorer Americans whose livelihoods are being eliminated, because the Battered American now has to pay the Irresponsibility Bill for others.

A lot of people are in this situation: their capital is gone, their taxes have gone up, and they know their taxes will go up further. It sucks, from a moral point of view, that these people are not the ones who caused the problem, and yet have to pay for it. Economically, we might say it’s even worse. As far as we can see on the horizon, the Battered American will have less and less discretion over his income and wealth. The government has dramatically accelerated the taking of it.

But it’s the former that we have. In CA, the top 1% of earners pay 50% of the personal income taxes. As CA goes, so goes the nation. That giant sucking sound you hear is the convoy of 1% of earners leaving the Golden state.

If our new president’s intent was to divide the American people and to cheapen the discourse between them, he is succeeding at a simply mahvelous rate considering the fact he has been in office barely a month. If his aim was to incite a full-scale, second American civil war between those who strive to achieve and those who don’t, veritable class warfare, or between the races, Obama is right on target.

The roaring uglies continued later that month when Barbara West of WFTV pursued Obama’s wealth-spreading and other topics in an interview with then-VP candidate Joe Biden who was so befuddled by her probing questions that he asked if she were joking. One of her queries cited Karl Marx’ very similar ideas on sharing the wealth. See that video here: http://www.wftv.com/video/17790025/index.html. Joe didn’t come off too well in that exchange but that didn’t cost Obama/Biden the election, either.

Americans were obviously not listening very well with all that Obamamania sweeping the land and the Obamassiah was encouraged, heartened, and filled with a sense of unrequited mission. He had laid the groundwork for a social and socialist revolution, and few seemed to care.

Three months later, Obama, properly ensconced on his throne, appointed Black terrorist sympathizer Eric Holder to become the nation’s Attorney General. Evidently, the Senate wasn’t paying much attention to his record, anymore than they accorded attention to other Obamanees, since he was confirmed, 75-21.

Earlier this week, a bare fortnight after his confirmation, the new AG let loose a tirade about how cowardly Americans were on the subject of race, suggesting that if Whites didn’t invite an African American next time they stoked up the backyard barbie then, ipso facto, they were racists.

The fear of God, okay a demigod, apparently precluded sufficient uproar against Holder’s cowardly remark since he still holds office. Had Bush’s attorneys general, John Ashcroft or Alberto Gonzalez, uttered similar racist comments, they would have been drawn, quartered, and forced to resign.

Fear, and the uglies, work both ways as seen in the recent and now infamous NY Post political cartoon,

If every mortgage holder in America missed a payment – say in April – and sent an e-mail to the White House saying they had to miss a payment but maybe they’d pay next month, then that would send a warning shot across their bows.

Count me among the middle-class taxpayers who have had enough. I gladly join the Chicago Tea Party, and the taxpayer revolt here in California which is certain to erupt now that our legislature steeply increased our taxes in the midst of a recession!

We *DO* own 5 homes as rentals right now but that is because we are small-time builders as well as doing Construction/Carpentry/Remodel jobs on the side [my husband trained all of his employees and still works just as hard or harder right beside them on the job-sites even though he's getting bad pain in his joints] and when the big real estate bomb dropped we were left with good homes we had built and no takers.
The real estate glut was the ruination of our local area because of Fanny/Freddy easy loans and so MISTER BIG BUILDER came along and started building HUGE plots of homes which ruined it for the small-timers like us.

So…? Now we are back to doing the stuff we started out with in the first place… “Construction/Carpentry/Remodel”. -Something good to fall back on for sure but it’s hard when you’ve branched out in another direction [building] and then need to start over and build up a new clientele again.

How best to proceed? Baby steps.

Thank you for an insightful, empathic, heart-felt article, Mr. Hanson.

Kudos, Doctor. We battered Americans have had it up to here getting the short end of the stick from hut-dwelling dead-enders in the benighted slums of far-off lands. Level playing field, my foot! More like one tilted agin’ us since at least Carter! The impudence of these illegals and Third Worlders doesn’t just grate … it stings after decades – nay centuries – of our noblesse oblige, that as you say ‘saves and feeds and helps’! By the sweat of our brow and the blood of our young was forged the treasures of this world … how dare they! What’s an honest White to do in these dusky times, etc. etc.!

Have you ever, just once, at any time in your memory…heard a politician THANK those of us who pay the taxes? No, I didn’t think so (because I’ve been listening for it for 40 years).

When pols want to spend more money on, say, homelessness they spin tales of woe and despair as if we’d never done a thing about it in the past. Never mind the BILLIONS they’re already spending. Never mind what we give through charity. It never counts. And no journalist ever asks them about it.

Not only do they not thank us. They take the credit for social spending as if they had dipped into their OWN (grandchildren’s) wallets. They prance and preen and praise one another’s “public service”. Yet, when we occasionally get a peek at their own tax records, we usually find the only place they’ve actually been frugal is with their own charitable giving.

Remember that as they come demanding more and more from us. See if anyone thanks us for all the money we’ve already given them. But don’t hold your breath.

[I apologize if this posts multiple times. I keep getting a blank screen.]

Keep writing, Dr. Hanson. We are reading. America is still a great country. I am hoping that the Left’s shadows on the cave wall will be revealed for what they are. Pray, learn, speak out. American’s don’t quit.

We’ve gone from a republic to a democracy and now with the election of a class warfare give the mob their neighbors money group of politicians getting ready to put the census under the control of the Presidency we’ll soon have an oligarchy. At least I won’t be alive when our male children are gelded to serve the new Caliphate.

I agree with the commenters above, we aren’t just battered, we are angry. I find it incomprehensible that politicians refuse to learn the obvious – that raising taxes lowers revenue and that raising taxes during a recession is doom to an economy.

Most of us aren’t getting raises in the foreseeable future, the laughable $13 tax rebate aside. How on earth do the pols expect us to add taxes upon taxes and still pay for our lives. Talk about getting angry, when these battered Americans are hounded by the IRS for not paying taxes because they preferred to feed their children and Geithner and gang are still walking free, we can talk angry then. It will have morphed well beyond mere anger.

“Mr, President, would you mind showing the vault copy of the Hawaiian Birth Certificate you claim is there? I had to produce my nine-year-old’s birth certificate yesterday at the DMV/MVA in order to get him a State-issued picture ID…why do you think that the same rules don’t apply to you?”

Free Markets and property rights are the hallmark of free mean and women.

One cannot have liberty without them, otherwise we are all slaves to the government.

You should try to understand what you are really wishing on the rest of us.

Free markets and property rights did not cause the problem you point to, bad judgment did. In any event, Why would you chose one small thing and it imagines the immense amount of good that free peoples have accomplished are not infinitely more valuable? The latter far outweighs any failures of free peoples.

There are failures. There is nothing perfect in this world. The damages that communism did to the world are much, much greater. Are you aware of that? Wht do you hold liberty and capitaism to a impossibly high standard of perfection and give totalitaian states, perticularly collectivist ones a pass?

More importantly, why do you hate freedom so much? Why do you hate free men and women so much? Why do you think that governments are wiser than free people perusing their own lives? Why do you think like a slave?

Is it really about of fear of your own future? Is it really fear of yourself. Giving up your freedom will not grant you security or happiness. Just the opposite wlll happen, in fact.

How do you imagine that you know better than what we have come to learn over thousands of years? What have you done in your live that would give the rest of us any reason to listen to you?

My gueus is the answer to these two questions are 1) Because you confuse your ego with wisdom, and 2) Nothing.

“Time for a new paradigm”? Totalitarianism states are nothing new. Communist states are nothing new.

This is a quite old paradigm, and they are some of the vilest outrages inflicted on mankind in all of history.

What it is time for is to finally stand up to the communist nonsense of the Liberal Democrats and their enablers. This is the core problem facing the nation.

At least a third of the people how voted for Obama did not do so tp usher in a socialist, totalitarina state. THey thought he was a ctntrist, a moderate.

They were had. They were lied to. Now it is a race to between totalitainian oppression, brbery and election froud on one hand, and the traditional political proceswes of the Republic on the other hand. If the former wins, you will lose.

Mr. Hanson, thank you for so perfectly expressing the feelings of my husband and myself. I am personally outraged daily at what is happening in this country we have been blessed with. We, the “Battered Americans”, need to stand up and demand that this stop. Your article reinforces this need and I thank you again for it.

Yeah, but we aren’t going to do anything about it, are we? This is a little off topice, but it is part and parcel of the problem. Take Pennsylvania for example. Murtha was re-elected despite everything. Specter will probably be re-elected despite everything. The only thing that will get Murtha out of office is if he has finally over-reached to the point of getting convicted of something. His shenanigans go all the way back to the 1980′s. Charlie Wilson was “his vote” on the Ethics Committee way back then. He told undercover investigators that he wasn’t philosophically opposed to taking a bribe, but he couldn’t take one right now because he didn’t know the guys offering it well enough yet.

I think it was Mencken who said that with respect to the presidential elections, every four years the American public re-enacts the Passion of the Christ: they are crucified between two thieves.

JeanneB and proreason, however, are right on the money, as is Dr. Hanson. And this will get a lot worse if, as Mr. Gibbs hints, we see Stimulus II. The only question remaining is, the next 47 months are going to be very long for someone, but whom? Us or the Demos.

America has voted in the “blame America first” crowd. So what we are getting is exactly what they have always advertised.

I find it amazing that the economic problems are much worse abroad and the banks even more leveraged. This goes under reported in the normal press because it would prove this isn’t all Bush’s fault.

Although Obama is accelerating us down the road to socialism it is only fair to point out that TARP started under Bush. The problem for us “battered” Americans is we have no representation in congress. Perhaps a reawakened republican party can assume that mantel.

Strange that when Democrats called for ‘sacrifice’ during wartime and didn’t see it, they complained. Now, still at war, they can only ask those that have been most able live with in their means to pay off those who unwisely didn’t.

And there is still a war going on.

Where is that ‘shared sacrifice’ message today? Where are the great plans of the Administration to solidify Afghanistan and help get Pakistan stabilized before it implodes? Oh, they are out telling us that those who spent wisely, lived economically sound lives, and who believe that adults who knowing sign a contract should be held to it… that WE are cowards. Don’t mind them letting one of the architects of the Red Mafia tripartite control of the Russian economy during the 1990′s getting a pardon. So good to let such architects of crime get off scot free, no?

So strange that everyone must pay for the inanities of the very few who are seeking to avoid what is coming to them for their own decisions. Cause a ‘banking crisis’? Imagine what it will look like when government controls them directly. But America has been there before and it took a President to say *no* to that and end it. One who trusted the American people to live sound lives economically, and who did not trust Congress to do so and looked to end the cronyism and corruption of that institution. Of course that would take some guts to do, today, to stand up for the overwhelming majority of America who lead good and sound lives economically, and who believe that your word is your bond in a contract. Instead we are now treated as subjects and the last government to do that didn’t like the results…

“This IS a zero-sum game. You tax it away from me, I can’t invest it or spend it. The Battered American has lost most of his personal capital, and the idea of starting a small business, or making a major home improvement, is a receding dream. I don’t know anyone who isn’t cutting back on everything, from groceries to water use to driving, running the heat, and phone or cable service. I do know people who were preparing to launch small businesses last year, and now have decided they can’t take the risk.”

—-

The crisis in the economy is due to a lack of confidence in the government’s ability to control its spending excesses with the result that their clueless deficit spending will be paid for with borrowed money which will be paid for with higher interest rates and higher taxes.

A President whose never run anything but an election campaign (with the media covering his front and back) and has never met a payroll has poured gasoline on the fire.

Last Sunday Chris Wallace interviewed two people about the economy – Obama adviser Schmidt President of Google ( a man apparently oblivious to the inappropriateness of someone in his position being a partisan) and a McCain adviser from Moody’s whose name I don’t recall. Both favored the so-called Stimulus although Schmidt didn’t feel it was big enough. I wondered why the guy from Moody’s was being interviewd at the same time when his message was only slightly different, but then he was described as a McCain campaign adviser.

This helps to explain why McCain was unable to convey a coherent message on the economy with the result that the economy is now in the hands of someone who not only doesn’t know what he is doing but whose instincts are the opposite of what’s needed.

I can’t really get angry at The One and his minions, as I am generally too busy being astonished at their chutzpah.

It takes a very special kind of arrogance to call the American people “cowards” on any subject. Does World War One ring a bell? World War Two? The Cold War? Or, on Mr. Holder’s favorite subject, race, how about Antietam, Gettysburg, and Cold Harbor? Show me another country that went to war against itself to abolish discrimination, especially in its most egregious form (slavery).

As for our stance toward the Islamic world, the sooner that the likes of the Saudi king realize that radical Islamism is a deadly threat to their own culture, their own nation-states, their own political power, and in the final analysis their own lives, the better. They have diverted the radicals’ anger and power lust by supporting them covertly and letting them play in their backyards as long as they confine their attentions to the West, but the Islamists won’t play that game forever. One day, they will decide they don’t need their “facilitators” anymore- and those who thought they were being so clever in “aiming” the Islamists in a “safe direction” will find themselves being bent over for beheading. Making “deals” with fanatics never works; something which the “progressives” over here never seem to quite comprehend, either.

As for “repairing our image”, every Democratic regime’ since Carter has claimed they need to do that to “correct” the “excesses” of their (Republican) predecessors. And every time, they have left the world in worse shape than it was when they arrived. I don’t expect this go-around to be any different, but maybe this time, some of those responsible (like Ms. Clinton) can be held to account after their grandiose schemes blow up in all our faces.

As for Dr. Chu, he won a Nobel Prize for trapping electrons ith a laser at Stanford, parlayed that into the directorship of Lawrence Berkeley Lab, and then spent five years gutting same, turning it from our premier’ nuclear energy research facility into a P.C. focus group that produces nothing but “peer-reviewed” screeds about “Anthropogenic Global Warming”. If he’s so worried about “Climate Change”, he should be in favor of nuclear and hydroelectric power. He’s not- he’s a Wind And Sun Only fanatic, which tells me he doesn’t even understand Ohm’s Law. Like most of the new breed in the Executive Branch, he is a classic pseudo-intellectual who repeatedly confuses his own subjective dogmas with reality. It will be the rest of us who pay the price for his delusions, I assure you.

As for myself, I have owned two house in my life. Eight years ago, I sold the first one to buy the one I live in now. I have one mortgage, for about a fifth of my home’s value, and it’s smaller than most peoples’ bill for a recent-production “pre-owned” car. I pay my mortgage on time every month, and my taxes on time every year- always in full. I don’t have even one credit card, as the idea of paying someone else for the privilege of using my own money, or trying to buy things with money I don’t own, has always seemed fairly stupid to me.

So when Mr. Holder, Mr. Obama, and/or Ms. Clinton, etc., want to lecture me on any subject, my response is, “I have a better idea. Why don’t you shut up and listen for a change, as you clearly know exactly nothing about this country, or its people. You aren’t even that cognizant of actual reality, from what I can see. And you certainly know absolutely nothing about me.”

Lmao…..i am buying more ammo and more popcorn…helluva show down there in foggy bottom..LMAO…my lib friends are mortified…..we didn’t really know about him they cry……why didn’t anyone tell us they moan…..ACORN has been trolling the neighborhoods here in Pittsburgh looking for forclosed homes to “settle” in…of course they aren’t looking in the “hood”..oh no….upscale baby…oh yeah…..us “cowards” will have a few things to say in the near future..oh yeah baby..oh yeah..

Thank you for this article. When the Democrats/liberals control so much of what is going on in this nation, media,(no censorship for them, don’t even think about cleaning up that trashbin) colleges, (tenure for every comrade who will indoctrine and humiliate the kids in their classes)single motherhood (bringing up the next generation of gangbangers whom taxpayers have fed)and every politician voting him/herself payraises and perks at every opportunity, plus lifetime retirement bennies even if they only served one term…

Ah, those of us who play by the rules, pay our taxes, live within our means, live by the golden rule, well, we are just not cool. I am under no illusion that this president cares about me or people like us.

Maybe the pedulum needed to swing (left) for people to get a clear view of what they can and will do. My suggestion, why not spend less time apologizing for America and get to work fixing the economy. If you don’t know how, hire some Republicans, for all our sakes. Don’t just listen to yourselves, that clearly is a losing strategy.

Once again, you make me wish I could write like that. Your article describes me perfectly. I will forward to everyone I know.
But, what is the solution? Who is the “other one” who will lead us out of this mess now? Do we have to wait four years? Is there no one to step up and say “ENOUGH!”

Politics debases common sense, and, it appears, overrides basic concepts of scientific reasoning. The latest victim of this mental disorder is DOE’s Secretary Chu, his pronouncements on global warming the evidence confirming cognitive impairment. How do scientifically illiterate government functionaries suborn a Nobel Laureate?

Imagine the scenario: The White House liaison to DOE brings the compliant pointy head his talking points and he — what? suddenly feels important, empowered, enthralled — kowtows and dutifully goes on tour blathering to the unwashed masses crazy notions about GW that he must know are not scientifically proven, and about which there is NOT a scientific consensus as yet.

I don’t know what we should call this disease. But it is the death of reason. Why anyone would want to work in government is beyond me, especially in this Administration.

When our younger son graduated from high school, he had a small scholarship to a college he was interested in. We filled out the financial paperwork and learned what % of his tuition, etc. we would be responsible for. When we saw the figure, we choked and knew the truth(within 4 seconds–funny, it doesn’t take long when you deal with facts). And we said, “Wow. We can’t afford to send you to college.”

So (here’s the shocker), he didn’t go. He served a tour in the Air Force, along with his wife, served 12 years as a police officer in a major city and now he and his wife are headed in to their 3rd year of building their own, very profitable business.

So thank you very much, Mr. Davis, for gently (how on earth do you do it?) speaking my mind.

My intellectual rage is about to blow the top of my head off. I DO NOT NEED THE LIKES OF OSAMA OBAMA AND ERIC HOLDER LECTURING ME ABOUT WHAT I HAVE TO DO FOR PEOPLE WHO’VE BEEN AT THE PUBLIC TROUGH.

It’s barely begun. But since it HAS begun, maybe–just maybe–the United States of America has a chance.

Now that President Bush is out of the way and no longer a target for the world we will have to get used to the next four to eight years of being lectured, talked down to, used, abused and accused. We are just not quite up to snuff and the government and the world are going to tell us over and over and over and over again.

Don’ mind me, I just found out that someone was willing to lend my twenty year old 5,000 dollars and he didn’t have to show proof of earnings. Of course he’s paying exorbitant interest rate and paying it off early won’t make a difference. Why am I feeling more and more that being a responsible adult and trying to teach your kids to make wise choices is getting less and less support by others. Where have all the wise people gone?

Obama’s only been in office for a month, and already you guys are whining like a bunch of trailer-park skanks, complaining about domestic abuse and demanding that a PFA be filed against the Nasty Liberal President who’s trying to spare us the sudden trip to 1870 we would all be going on if America’s economic infrastructure were allowed to collapse, millions more Americans were abruptly made homeless, and all of YOUR smart, responsible choices and wise, Conservative, on-time money management decisions were rendered moot because the Free Market had destroyed the value of your investments, along with everyone else’s, in a truly indiscriminate and diversity-embracing fashion.

It’s like you WANT the United states to become a ward of the IMF, just so you can win a $5 side-bet about FDR and the New Deal. Even if you have bullets and bullion, you’re going to burn with the rest of us, so try to be a little helpful, willya? .

I am SO damn sick of being scolded. Racist? Of course I am! All my life, Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, and their predecessors have told me I’m racist. Greedy? Moderately so. I need food, and stuff, and if I sell all I have and give to the poor, I too will be poor. Imperialist? I guess. But why is it imperialist aggression to take out Saddam, while all the time I’m being told I should instead make Sudan behave over Darfur? Let ‘em stew in their own juices, I says; and then I’m told I don’t care.

The Federal Reserve transferred more than 2 TRILLION in cash from US Banking system in 2007 and 2008, to destinations unknown, they refuse to disclose reciepients. On a single day in Sept of 2008 over 500 BILLION was transferred to Europe by Federal Reserve.

Who was supervising them..?? nobody in our legislature obviously, which was their job as defined by the Constitution. They sat on their butts while banks were robbed in plain sight.

What is occuring today is direct result of looting US banking by Federal Reserve system in the last 2 years. The Banking system was carved up and the US taxpayers were left holding the empty Bag.

The problem with President Obama’s admin is they dont have the guts to stand and tell the truth; The American banking system was destroyed by a group of international banking families that own the Federal Reserve.
The USA no longer controls its own money system, the last President to attempt that was JFK, it didnt work out so well for him.

Nationalizing the Banking system will occur, it is only a matter of time. There is no other way out for the USA. We have sent Citi and BofA more money than they are worth, we could have purchased both banks entirely and fixed the problem in late 2008. Maybe these trillions are to assure US presidents are not killed off when US banks are nationalized and Federal Reserve loses its cash cows.

Don’t you get it? What they are telling you with all these high taxes is precisely that they do not believe you know what is best for your money, unlike they do. The more government taxes, the more it is telling the citizen that said citizen does not know what is the best way to spend the citizen’s income. The reverse is that government does know what is best. And the patronage bill they just passes shows you exactly what government thinks is the best way to use our money: to funnel it to democrat opperatives, lobbyists, and donors, so they can help them buy the next few elections.

For all the IDIOTS who blame Bush for the weak economy, let us NOT forget who has been running Congress since jan 07. Yep, Nasty Piglosi,Disgusting Hairy Greed, the backdoor santa, Barney Fag,Charlie the RagHo, and the rest of the Karl Marx wannabes who think ne, you, and every living American should be treated as serfs by our lords ad masters, the COMMUNIST party of America.

The Main Street Media and the primary voters in caucus states are the real cowards. They refused to recognize and report on Obama’s lack of qualifications and poor character, or vote for the “white guy” during public voting (no more secret ballots in America!) just because he was black, a Muslim sympathizer, a radical socialist without knowledge of history or our American founding. Unfortunately, democrats voted not on the basis of his character, but on the basis of his skin color. A dangerous man indeed.

That is Obama’s intent, as he doesn’t want YOU to invest it or spend it. He wants to give it to someone else to spend. And who might that be…certainly a “victim” of something…more than likely a victim of their own choices, which probably include one or more of the following:

quit school at 14
uses/deals drugs
belonged to a criminal gang
spent some time in prison
has never paid his/her bills
always seems to have money for drugs, cigarettes or booze
doesn’t have a job and doesn’t want one
resides in this country illegally
isn’t sure how many children he has fathered
hasn’t contributed to raising his children
has gambled irresponsibly
pays no taxes…and probably never has
isn’t sure who the fathers of her children are
blames everyone else for his/her problems
knows where to line up for all the free stuff

These are the people who will be spending the money Obama and Congress stole from J.E. Dyer and all tax-paying Americans. Get used to it.

I’m afraid when push comes to shove, they are in the position to do all of the pushing and shoving. We’ve been living in a police state for some time now, albeit with fairly well-mannered police. Anyone deal with the IRS lately, or even the local building inspector? None of the Constitutional protections apply. We are in a very deep hole from a personal liberty standpoint. I too believe the ‘coward’ remarks are softening us up for covert reparations.

2. Cancel your liberal newspaper subscriptions. The most vile liberal papers in the country are The New York Times and the Washington Post. They need to go under from lack of sales! If you have a liberal leaning local newspaper, cancel your subscription.

3. Don’t buy liberal magazines like Newsweek and Time.

4. Give money to anti-liberal groups. One of them that I really like right now is the National GOP trust. You can find out more about them at nationalrepublicantrust.com.

5. Write or call your Senator or Congressman and let them know you are mad and intend to vote out of office anyone who supports the liberal agenda.

6. Join protest marches and groups. These are coming because all of us are not going to take this lying down.
Rick Santelli’s outburst on CNBC has energized people to start planning tea party revolts. This is the first shot heard round the country!

It’s time to fight! Don’t take this crap lying down. American freedom was fought with a battle and to keep it we are going to need to band together and never, ever, never give up our country to these anti-American mongrels.

As soon as I read what Eric Holder said during the speech to Justice Department employees I wrote an e-mail to the White House. I stated that there are few incentives and many more disincentives to discuss race in this politically correct “gotcha” environment. Lo and behold a day or two later the New York Post prints their controversial cartoon and the protesters came out in force. If we really have progressed as a society, commentators would have merely noted that the cartoon was stupid and in poor taste but no one would have taken the time to protest.

RE.Jed
“Does one have to destroy the nation
to convert it to a one-party socialist
state?” Yes, that’s what Lenin said and did to Russia to bring about the revolution: defeat in the 1st WW, for one, his slogan was “the worse for the
country, the better for our cause”.When
the majority of the people are poor and
hungry, they are ready for socialism.
And we aleady have an eloquent demagoque in power.

The Professor nails it down like no other. Just remember, who ever voted for a $800 Billion Bailout with out even reading it; has to be voted out of office.
Why would we ever send someone to Washington that would sell us out for a Pelosi or Reid sight unseen. Not one Representative or Senator out of 100 ever saw that huge giveaway before signing; only an idiot could do something like that.

Having been raised by Depression-era parents who survived it all and got on their feet in the 1950s, I must have picked up their philosophy. I never thought I was THAT exceptional or THAT entitled, and to get along I had to have at least some of my wits about me. I’ve been fortunate. Some “assembly” was required, too.

But while I was (slowly) evolving all about me I saw people who wanted it all, and wanted it NOW, damn the torpedoes. The fluttering sound we hear? Chickens coming home to roost.

This week I learned my first grandchild is on the way. The Founders constantly referred to “Posterity”, and rightfully so.

The “stimulus” is now LAW. LAW! How do we stop it? Congress has now the authority to give away more than they ever could in their wildest dreams and they will work 24/7 to get it doled out. Anyone who tries to stop any of it will be labeled an anti-education, anti-environment, anti-labor, anti-American manufacturing, anti-poor, unAmerican racist — unless he suggests maintaining our military and defense capabilities, in which case he’ll be a war monger, as well.

Good points- wrong addressee. Should have been: Dear Mr. Former President. Question for the present, what would you have done in the past thirty days to try and begin stopping the pain, besides vote NO 216 to 3. You got to start somewhere.

Tatiana, Someone should start a checklist, marking off each stage of what appears to be a classic Marxist take over. People can say “socialist,” now. After all, socialists mean well, don’t they? The day may come when no one flinches when we describe Obama as a Marxist. After all, Marxists mean well, don’t they?

#30 Delia . . . writes: “The real estate glut was the ruination of our local area because of Fanny/Freddy easy loans and so MISTER BIG BUILDER came along and started building HUGE plots of homes which ruined it for the small-timers like us.”

Welcome to free-market capitalism. You got a problem with it? Players with more money and more influence shoving you aside? That’s the American way. Why are you undermining the values of our founding fathers? Why are you against the freedoms that our brave young men and women shed so much blood to defend? You’re a spoiled child who expects everything to be handed to them,and that nobody should have anything more than you have. You would rather destroy this great nation than allow the markets to work. Treason, I say!

right on all of the above, but tatiana nailed it best.The entire program is aimed at getting Americans to dislike each other, and to resent each other, and its working.Who are we all angry with? The people who are getting , in most views, undeserved financial assistance.Why get angry with them , whoever they are?There was no mass movement from these people asking to be singled out for a handout.This was a political move to get large numbers of people angry with each other.Watch as Obama continues to slice out parts of the demographic for favors at the expense of other parts.This is the way to class warfare that will allow the eventual extermination of the Kulaks(thats anyone who protests).They will cut out slices based on incomes, urban vs suburban, religious vs secular,high school grads vs college educated,etc.Gun owners vs non will be coming soon.The aim is to get every segment of the population coming to Washington on their knees begging for handouts,and then agreeing to submission to the orders of the great leader.Look who is running the banks.Barney Frank, Chris Dodd, Nancy P.They couldn t organize a one car funeral but now they sit and require men who have worked all their lives building cars or banks or phone companies to submit company plans for the review of the dumbest among us.

White people are cowards. We should ask of this creep “what real qualifications do you have to be AG other than your light brown skin”. Did you graduate at the top of your law school”. Did you graduate at the top of your superior NYC public high school which has a lot of Jewish and Asian students? Maybe you did. If so then say I made it because I was good.
Those of use who deal with the bureaucracy and academia know plenty of black racists who got hired and promoted because of their skin color. Some are nasty racists and some just are rent seekers.
I have had black Ph.D. students and they are welcome in my house. Not so my black racist colleagues.
Obama has reinstated racial conflicts for political reasons. The left is convinced that they cn control the racist rent seekers because the white leftists in their heart consider blacks to be their inferiors. They are scared of blacks and Hispanics who do well because they are talented and work hard.

I’m somewhat sympathetic to the charge of “coward”. Black and brown men stick together. They get out in the streets and demonstrate together. White men don’t do that because they are afraid of the charge of racism. Just the mention of the word makes whites cowar in the corner.

Globalists are selling our country right out from under us. They insult us every single day. Americans are lazy and stupid, they say. We need imported Indians to do the knowledge jobs. We need illegal Mexicans to do the labor jobs. Illegal aliens get free medical care. You pay to educate their children. And now – their children can be declared “children at risk” because they don’t speak english and you will be paying for a lot of really expensive social services for the entire family of illegals.

When your white collar jobs were exported and your 401k’s were looted, what did you do? Not a god d*mn thing. Not one thing. When our markets were being flooded with cheap imports from COMMUNIST China, what did you do? As factories were closing down, what did you do? Not one god d*mn thing.

Now Victor David Hansen has given you the key. You can accept your victimhood just like your black and brown brethren and still not do one god d*mn thing.

I have something to add to Rick Santinis”tea party”. Dont pay any taxes. If large numbers of americans refused to pay for the lazy and the stupid, the COMMUNISTS like Obamaskank, nasty Piglosi, Hairy Greed, or the backdoor santa Barney I smell F(rank) will not have the money necessary to force collectivism on us. The first Boston Tea Party was a taxpayer revolt. So was Prop 13 in California. Let them try to FORCE 40 million taxpayers who wont co-operate with there COMMUNIST schemes.

Let me just try to add my two and a half cents; be another voice in your beautiful symphony of words and thoughts.

Create some harmonies, sir, that may add to the texture of your overall brilliant presentation.

As I, Rachel, Freshman at Stanford, see it, around all of this administration’s minimizing of American goodness, greatness, honesty and perseverence, they crown America’s wonderfulness with a wreath of Stimulus thorns, designed, of course, to benefit some, but hurt most.

While it batters Mr. & Mrs. Beaten down American, it rewards the slovenly, the career slacker, the poster people for civic irresponsibility. It honors the actors who know their repo man and his cell number by heart.

Barack, hapless Harry, niggardly Nancy and the Democratic Party lawyers schemed a plan, they named Stimulus to reward every Democratic voting Tom, Dolt and Henrietta; neredowells, miscreants deadbeats and other slovenly creatures of bad habits.

They reward these irresponsible lemmings with oodles and oodles of money because they want their FUTURE votes.

You see, Barack and his merry men who give to the poor and steal from the rich, have no idea on God’s green earth how to truly deal with America’s economic crisis.

They heavn’t the foggiest. But they do know the theory of making lemonade out of lemons.

So, they designed the Stimulus Bill to act as a slacker money tree.

They designed the Stimulus bill to garner low income/high volume FUTURE votes.

The Devil of this bill is in the details. But before we get to the details, let me add some historical perspective, albeit very recent history.

Obama and his braintrust know very well the deliterious affects his wastefulness and accompaning cockamame stimulus package will have on the country as a whole.

To dem Dems, though, this is the price responsible, bill-paying Americans must pay for losing the election. Put another way, to the Democratic victors, I mean voters, I mean victors and voters, go the spoils.

Truth be known, although Barack and his merry band of miscreants don’t know who to fix the crisis, they do know how to buy votes.

Ignoring a huge fact.

That the whole economic crisis was mainly caused by the Democratic Party (Barney Frank in particular)when they legislatively forced Freddie and Fannie to make loans to credit-challenged deadbeats.

Anyway, out of this sour lemon of a national crisis, Rham, Nancy, Harry and the other merry men decided to make some lemonade.

In other words, using a cool trillion in the guise of the housing/Wall Street crisis, they set out to buy future low income, high volume slacker votes. Although these knaves don’t always cotton to the value of hard work, they do know the color of money.

And, like all great, but nefarious deeds, (As I mentioned above) the scheme was so simple only a room of Democratic lawyers could have hatched it (did hatch it). Plus, it’ll probably prove incredibly and Democratically effective when election time again rolls around.

All the Dems had to do to set the wheels in motion was keep all Republicans out of the bill writing process.

Which they did.

Consequently, the Democrats were able to make sure almost a trillion dollars goes to the folks that need it most, I mean who they need most; the lemmings that elected them just a month ago.

So if you’re a slacker, Obama is providing you all with your own personal golden parachutes. Hey, this redistribution of wealth thing really works, albeit in a corrupt, cynical, creepy kind of way.

It will work because because virtually (3 Republicans signed up with this Devil of a deal) all the money in the package will go where it was designed to go. Unsurprisingly, (reintroducing the Devil) you’ll find the devil in the details.

In point of fact,lower educated, lower income, high volume Democratic voters will find this bill the greatest money making opportunity since no-show government jobs.

My good man, if you’re a slacker, deadbeast, Fannie or Freddie mortgage recipient who didn’t realize timely payments were due every month, Barack will ignore your irresponsibility, excuse your non-payments, and give you a cool newly minted 5% loan rate, let me repeat that; A 5% LOAN RATE, while demanding rich people use their tax money to pick up your new loan costs. Moreover, as Eric Holder recently pointed out, black voters deserve this red carpet treatment more than anyone else because “White people are cowards who refuse to live in segregated neighborhoods”.

Eric, you have such a way with words.

This Barack melting pot, I mean money pot also includes tidy pay outs to first time home buyers born of the deadbeat culture, too. If you’re a Dem voter, who says you can’t have it all?

Just tell us you don’t think you can keep up those timely payments (for whatever reason) and the new government will modify your loan down to a figure you can deal with. Golly, maybe you can afford $400 a month instead of the $1,400 you signed up for?

And from then on, you just pay principle, no interest. Sir Obama wants to make sure you realize how much he values your vote.

Of course, somebody may ask, “Hey, can my successful 35 year old brother and wife, who both work fifty five hour weeks, have a baby and a $2200 mortgage from the local bank, get the new 5% loan?

“Are you crazy”?, I hear Barack say in my ear in a dream.

“Check the fine print, girl. Not only did they probably vote for McCain, but they don’t qualify.”

“May I ask why, your Annointed one, I summon the courage to ask?”

Then the brown eyed handsome man, sitting at his new dark walnut desk, looks up at lil’ole’ blue eyed Rachel, simple headed college coed that she is, gives her a frown and exclaims, “look Missy, your brother doesn’t get a piece of this money pie because he never had to suffer though a bill collector’s call, never had a car repossessed, DIDN’T GET A FREDDIE OR FANNIE LOAN. In fact, probably thinks of Freddie Fannie as a good name for a white singing group.”

And wouldn’t vote for me if my name was, Bob because my face doesn’t look like the other faces on all the money in his wallet.

Alan 99, what ? Is your brain that warped that you are blaming George Bush for the two bills that just passed? THose two bills are what is ADRESSED in this blog. And as for STARTING somewhere, you’re implying we have four more years of bills like this, who is going to pay for all this? That is the new question that the French are asking Americans…

Ooyo, if the loans hadn’t been wrapped with a bow [by the liberals] and given to people who couldn’t afford to pay them because everyone ‘deserves’ a house even if they can’t pay for it [socialism 101] then the big builders wouldn’t have built so big. Cause meet effect. We’ve ALWAYS had BIG BUILDERS around here…but they OVER-BUILT when houses were going like hot-cakes because of the welfare loans to people who clearly were not capable to pay for them.

We built our own home 15 years ago…we’ve always paid our bills, have stellar credit and we are paying down the mortgages of the other homes we are stuck with for now too. We haven’t thrown in the towel and are taking responsibility for our decisions. I know, I know…crazy right?! ;)

#30 Delia . . . writes: “The real estate glut was the ruination of our local area because of Fanny/Freddy easy loans and so MISTER BIG BUILDER came along and started building HUGE plots of homes which ruined it for the small-timers like us.”

Welcome to free-market capitalism. Blah blah blah…

—-

Don’t post again until you understand that Fanni and Freddie are GSEs. They are not an example of free -market capitalism any more than you are an example of intelligent life.

If you were being sarcastic let me point out that Obama is beyond parody.

jay:They are scared of blacks and Hispanics who do well because they are talented and work hard.
Stop that shit right now! when did Black and hispanic issues become one and the same. now what ever anger they have towards blacks get smeared on any hispanic issue. they are not the same How come it isn’t white and hispanic issues combined? race baiter stop that shit

Exactly right, Terry. -And, I just noticed we both spelled “Fannie” wrong. Your spelling was most likely a typo though…mine was definitely a misspelling. I’m always catching myself AFTER the fact here. Drives me nuckin’ futz.

The thing that kills me here is how some people assume I must be wealthy? HUH?! My husband and I have had ONE [ONE!] family vacation in our 22 married years together. Disneyland was a bad choice for that ONE choice. ;p

We don’t live beyond our means in high highfalutin style and we were broke and lived paycheck to paycheck for the first five years of our marriage. We scraped and saved and went without and when we started our business it was a HUGE scary leap of faith. -And, isn’t that what the American Spirit is all about? Taking a risk and working your @ss off?

I’m so effing sick of the victimhood in our society. These are the same people who will stampede a man to death at a Wal-Mart for some sale items. God help us if those same people don’t get any more of our hard earned money if we decide to revolt and quite paying Uncle Sam.

I know exactly what Fannie and Freddie are . . . and who Phil Gramm is. Don’t post again until you admit the ubiquity of human greed in this system. Until then read this . . . I’m outraged! I know I can count on you being the same.

(The housing plan) will give millions of families resigned to financial ruin a chance to rebuild. It will prevent the worst consequences of this crisis from wreaking even greater havoc on the economy. And by bringing down the foreclosure rate, it will help to shore up housing prices for everyone.

I also want to be very clear about what this plan will not do: It will not rescue the unscrupulous or irresponsible by throwing good taxpayer money after bad loans. It will not help speculators who took risky bets on a rising market and bought homes not to live in but to sell. It will not help dishonest lenders who acted irresponsibility, distorting the facts and dismissing the fine print at the expense of buyers who didn’t know better. And it will not reward folks who bought homes they knew from the beginning they would never be able to afford. In short, this plan will not save every home.

The balls of that guy. How could anybody believe in something like that?

Maybe you folks should stop listening to each other and start listening to the person you’re criticizing. It can only increase your knowledge.

I don’t feel any anger towards the likes of Obama and Co. No, my anger is for the idiots who voted them in when the economy tanked. My anger is for McCain who rushed out and said the “fundamentals are still strong”, when obviously something was broken. The ignorant voters made this happen, many of them tax-producers.

My Mother and one of my sisters were fervent Obama supporters. Now, they’re listening to what I have to say, as they realize that maybe not all is as it should be. Now all I hear is, “That’s a good point.” Yes, it is. It’s the same point I made six months ago. Grrrr….

Thanks for the clarifications. It is good to look the beast in his eyes and know his name and intent. The quote is worth remembering and comparing to the last eight years of BDS, “The worse for our country, the better for our cause.” This must have been a real sell point for the neurotoxic news MSM and generation X.

A tax evader as head of the IRS, a man who facilitated the pardon of an FBI most wanted criminal as attorney general, “I command you to delete my files” bully as head of the EPA. Obama’s nominations are insulting.

It is time not only to get angry but to resolve to do something about the abuse and insult honest people are receiving. Only one month into his term of office and it is clearer than ever that the President and his staff are Marxists. The aim: reduce everyone to dependence on the state

If the courage hasn’t been beaten out of us battered Americans, and if love of country still abides in our hearts, then, fellow citizens, let’s do one simple thing: take action to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States.

The Constitution plainly states that no one except a natural born citizen is eligible to the office of president, and Obama refuses to release his birth certificate. Quo usque tandem abutere, Barry baby, patientia nostra?

The answer: as long as he can get away with it.

The real question is, how much longer will Congress, the Supreme Court, the Attorney General – ha ha – and most of all, we, the people of the United States, continue to put up with his flouting of the Constitution?

Your piece has lit a fire in my heart and mind, along with some important, fundamental questions:

What was the galvanizing reason behind the formation of this republic?

Oppressive taxes being levied from afar, and regular folks not having a voice in the matter. Sound familiar? The response of regular folks then was to talk, meet, organize, express their voices, defend their rights and homes, and in the end, it culminated in one of the most significant documents ever drafted: The Declaration of Independence.

What were the central points asserted in the Declaration of Independence?

We have God-given rights that, among others, include the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever a government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right and duty of the People to throw off such government and provide new guards for their future security. Is the time for the People to throw off the federal government coming soon? Should the States throw off the federal government? Where does the sovereignty really lie?

While the Declaration put Independency for the 13 States in motion, it did not organize a new government among them. It merely declared them free of Britain. It took another decade or more to recognize the need for a coherent governing document (which, of course, the Articles of Confederation was not) to assure the Liberty and Freedom of the People (by and through the States) that was secured in the Revolutionary War. One of the greatest collection of minds assembled and focused on the task of creating an ideal form of government. The result was the drafting and adoption of our Constitution.

What is the legal foundation of the Constitution?

It was signed as a binding contract among member States, by and through the representatives of the People (the States getting their authority and sovereignty from the People). The truly revolutionary idea from our Founders is that Governments were established to serve the People, not the other way around! (And, yet, today we are ordered around by the feds and the States, and to what end? So, we can work hard and pay taxes to enable the government to reward bad behavior and discourage responsibility, creativity, and enterprise? When and where has this ever worked??)

What is one of the central features of the Constitution, as underscored by the adoption of the Bill of Rights?

To provide for a limited federal government and to lower the risk of its complete takeover of the lives of the People. For the last 80 years or more, this has been utterly abandoned, and now anything goes, unless the Supreme Court orders otherwise. Does anyone care anymore what the Constitution says?

What are the 9th and 10th amendments for? Does anyone or any politician know? If so, do they really care?

The powers specifically given to the federal government are enumerated and finite; those that are not are infinite and are reserved to the States and/or the People. Does anyone, including those in public office, care about this? Do politicians just assume the People (in their mind, the dumb masses) have no idea what the supreme law of the land really says?

Once upon a time, Presidents and federal legislators spent time considering the constitutional basis for a bill before it was enacted. When was the last time this actually happened? 1890? 1910? Certainly not in most of our lifetimes.

All of this talk about tax revolt and tea parties is refreshing in its way, but of course, it is just talk. At some point, action will be required, preferably at the ballot box and not in the streets in riot gear.

Are all of the Battered Americans ready to re-commit to the principles that started, built, and held this republic together for so long? Sadly, I cannot be sure, given all of the apathy around us (and the percentages that show up to vote).

A famous Democrat President once said: “Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can for your country.” So, who exactly is asking their country to do for them? Who exactly is doing for their country? What happens when we all become takers and there are no more givers?

I think the silent majority is deeply patriotic (regardless of who sits in the Oval Office – unlike the sunshine patriots) and does not want to to see our country abandon its founding principles. The problem is that they have been abandoned for so long, there are precious few who know or can even remember how things were supposed to work.

Dr. Hanson, you are one of the few regular, resonating voices of reason with the ability to reach a lot of the People. You have legions of loyal readers and a silent majority behind you. Please keep lighting the fires of reason in the hearts and minds of men. You are the John Adams of our time.

It was tried already and nobody wanted to take it seriously [just like so many people wanted to believe Zero wanted to move us to Socialism].

Meanwhile, Barack is in the process of reverse engineering our constitution. You see? That’s one thing handy about being a ‘constitutional scholar’…the more knowledge you have, the better capable of developing inside strageties of how to hack it and manage to keep the sheeple docile and complacent.

Yes, thank you, AlexinCT #81 and Saltherring #88. I do understand what Obama’s political cohort thinks.

I raised the issue I did at #24 because it will govern our economic outcomes regardless of how we feel about bailing out an irresponsible government, and the irresponsible 7% of our neighbors.

We could be thrilled and happy, pleased and proud, to pay higher taxes out of a situation in which our home equity has gone negative, and our nest egg has been halved. We could be dancing in the streets and high-fiving each other over this, and it wouldn’t change the economic reality. We have nothing to INVEST and nothing to SPEND.

Meanwhile to “one of your own” at #120, you say:

“Maybe you folks should stop listening to each other and start listening to the person you’re criticizing. It can only increase your knowledge.”

This is a common complaint. So, let’s get this straight. The people who did NOT borrow foolishly, who did NOT vote for the politicians who encouraged others to; the people who still have something left today, just enough for the government to be coming after it — these people, the prudent and solvent, should start listening to the people who made the financial mistakes, and the politicians who encouraged them to?

What exactly is it that you think people who can still pay their bills are going to learn from the people who can’t, about how financial matters work?

It’s not that I don’t have compassion and concern for the people who made bad decisions and got themselves into trouble. It’s that I’m wise enough to realize THEY are not the people to listen to, regarding how to get out of this mess.

#113. The same people who will be paying off the trillions of deficits run up over the last eight years, including the $750B of TARP dough, will be paying off the new stuff. All of a sudden everybody’s getting deficit religion. History didn’t just start on 1/21/09.

The conservative wing of the Republican Party needs a voice…or voices….NOW! Could it be your congressman or senator? Certainly none of mine, as I live in Washington state, which is almost as far gone as California. Where is the next Ronald Reagan?

VDH, indeed…my esteemed friend, indeed. Not too long ago, I wrote of the Unbidden American. Now, that American countryman is battered and unbidden.

We are not part of the equation when it comes to the “styling of solutions” that take place in our government today. “We won” is a euphemism for “you don’t matter”.

Right now there is a ferocious and hungry beast bearing its teeth at our Battered and Unbidden Americans. They have drawn a line in the sand and dared us to try to cross it.

They have called us cowards to our faces and dared us to respond. They have called us racists incessantly and dared us to defend a lifetime of slander in that regard.

They have called us bitter, fanatical, greedy, homophobic, religion-clinging, warmongering, not nuanced, stupid, and sexist. And dared us to defend ourselves.

They have stolen our information stream, filled it with distortions and lies and dared us to catch them.

They have met with enemies of state in secret and dared us to bring charges of treason or Logan Act violations.

They have slandered the motives, intent and acts of our country at home…and abroad…and dared us to reign them in, while creating a false image of us to the world.

They did all these things without asking us, getting our permission, or even letting us into the process.

When they cooked the books at Fannie and Freddie, they covered for Franklin Raines, Herb Moses and Jim Johnson…and for good measure, blamed Wall Street “greed” for the inevitable crisis.

When ACORN got caught yet again interfering with the lawful process of elections and stuck its big paw in the housing and banking world, they covered for their acts and blamed Republicans and “others” for making “an issue out of nothing”.

For this privilege of being slandered, lied to, having our information stream gangraped and the truth strangled…we get to shoulder higher taxes while they spread “our earned income” to make things “more fair”.

They called us cowards…and they are right. Fools and cowards would take this sort of treatment and refuse to stand up to it. Fools and cowards would stare in the face of a stolen information stream, of a constant abuse of our facts, a constant slandering of this land of ours…and do virtually nothing while she is being abused.

Fools and cowards would take the flaming everytime one disagrees with a leftist point of view. Fools and cowards would look the other way at the Gang of 88 at Duke. Fools and cowards would refuse to insist on honor, truth, integrity in our media and academia.

We are battered and unbidden in our own country because we have been way too passive in the face of an internal enemy. Unchecked Angry Leftism is a snarling beast and we have been too timid to slay it. And every day we do not, we deserve the title of coward and fool.

135. Saltherring,
“Certainly none of mine, as I live in Washington state, which is almost as far gone as California.”
~

UGH! You too? My husband keeps talking about moving to Idaho. -But, he’s originally from IL and I’m a WA born girl and as sickeningly liberal as it is here I love my home state. The idea of moving just makes me sad in my heart. :(

My hub loves the Gipper too and keeps a photo of him on his office wall. Funny thing is…almost all of his Italian/Catholic family are liberals [his eldest brother is an Chicago lawyer *eyeroll*]…yep, my hub is the ‘black sheep’…he-he-he. :D

I’d like to see someone strong and conservative and for the freedom of Americans [someone preferably who has run a business on their own]. It’s disgusting how the Gov makes business owners/employers turn into their own personal accountants by raping the taxes of their employees to give to Big Bro. The paperwork ALONE is nightmarish [without nary a cent paid to the employer who has to deal with the job] and it’s so far gone from Constitutional! Sickening.

FED up? Oh hell YEAH we’re FED up!

My husband already believes we’ll NEVER retire or have another vacation again. I’m beginning to believe it myself but SURVIVAL and keeping afloat is first and foremost in our minds.

Where is our Repub hero? Where is he/she hiding? I like Palin an’ all but I think we can do better [no offense to Palin supporters].

Americans have withstood much more battering than this, and has come out the strongest, freest, and most equal society in history precisely because Americans are not cowards. There has been a lot of pain along the way, and there will always be more to come – but it is not in the nature of the people to cut an run in the face of autocratic contempt.

Perhaps Holder, in his misguided way, will serve to remind Americans that they are far more than he perceives them to be; they are far closer to Santelli’s view – a people of strength, and charity.

J.E. Dyer: Irresponsibility Bill. I like that. A bill rewarding irresponsibility, written by the irresponsible. Good point made @ #134 as well.

AG Holder: I live in part of New England where there are very few African Americans. I would love to discuss race relations in this country with knowledgeable AA’s, so please organize a traveling tour of same and have them contact me. For planning purposes re our discussions, I would have them become intimately familiar with the facts and figures highlighted in Heather MacDonald’s recent City Journal article. For my part, I’ll try to retain the services of Bill “Uncle Tom” Cosby as facilitator. Please get back to me on this ASAP.

Steven Chu: Since you’ve adopted the tactics and reasoning of a common political hack, you should give back your Nobel Prize in Physics. Perhaps you could negotiate with the Nobel Committee to have it down-graded, and take instead Al Gore’s Peace Prize. Clearly, neither of you deserve the awards you’ve received, though I think the image of a Nobel Physicist perched atop a street corner soapbox is a tad more galling to the Swedes than that of a washed up pol flogging his Peace Prize for monetary gain. Obviously, they’ve seen that before and it doesn’t appear to bother them.

Dr. Hanson,
My father was born in 1925 in Oregon. When he was 17, he volunteered for the Army Air Force and flew bombing missions over Hitler’s Europe as a radioman on a B-24. After VE Day, he volunteered to stay on and fly missions for the OSS, bringing Nazi’s from all over Eastern Europe to the Nuremburg Trials. I didn’t even hear about much of this until my father was into his 70′s. In his own words, he “just did what he was asked to do, just like everyone else who served”.

This kind, soft-spoken, gentle, ice-blue-eyed man of 83, has NEVER, EVER spoken a racist or bigoted word in my presence, nor in the presence of my brother or sister’s that I’m aware of. I have never witnessed him treat any man, regardless of race, with anything but respect, unless the man was a scoundrel and deserving of his scorn or doubt. He was NOT and IS NOT a COWARD. He is was NOT and IS NOT a RACIST. How dare these elitists lecture him. Not “God Damn, America”, but “God Damn, THEM!” Eric Holder and Barack Obama are not fit to sit in the same room with my father, not because of the color of their skin, but because of the color of their hearts…..

High heeled boy: A male who has never had to work a hard day in his life…someone with heels that are never worn [perfectly in tact soled shoes]…someone who has never had to ‘walk the walk’ physically as well as metaphorically.

I seem to remember that when Clinton left office we had billions in surplus, jobs were plentiful, people could afford the mortage payments. Then in eight short years the whole darn country has fallen apart. Gee I don’t care for obama but how in the devil did he do all this in 4 weeks…get real people lay the blame where it belongs. The greedy corporate thugs and big business and the oil companies.

“I seem to remember that when Clinton left office we had billions in surplus, jobs were plentiful, people could afford the mortage payments ”
~
Checks and balances, sweetheart. When a Repub Congress was in order we got the Welfare Reform bill signed which was a HUGE success.

The best our country does is under a lib/pub mix. When either party has too much party it is detrimental. The “SHOCK” part is…is that Obama is weilding that power without care AT ALL. PERIOD. THAT, my fellow human, is the SCARY part.

I think there’s going to need to be some real change to correct this mess. More than just rolling back the stimulus package. I’m not sure of all of what needs to be done, but power needs to be decentralized away from the Federal government for sure.

I’m thinking a Constitutional amendment to set term limits for Congress is needed. No more than 2 terms for Senators. 4 or maybe less terms for Representatives.

Career politicians who sit in DC and imagine how the world works and how to buy more votes need to be eliminated. There are too many honest people in the world to only have crooks in DC.

Now all you enlightened folks, having helped to put these Communists in power, will get to spend the rest of your lives trying to overcome the damage you have done to yourselves. Good luck, because soon you will live under tyranny. But who knows, maybe Iraq will liberate you some day.

Thank God for educated lawyers who earned their Law degrees. Would that Obama, to whom Harvard awarded a degree, had half the knowledge of a John Adams or Lincoln. Obama betrays an ignorance of history, Constitutional law and common sense and has no humility or sense of humor or honor. He is indeed our first affirmative action president. He knows nothing of this country’s founding nor what it means to be an American.

Obama appointed a race-baiting Attorney General and four tax cheats to his cabinet. His administration fosters division and discontent among our citizens. By any measure, Obama is a singular threat to America’s security and prosperity.

#151 Martge – One more time for those who didn’t get it the first time: We did not have a surplus at the end of Clinton’s terms. It was all smoke and mirrors based on two things: The idea that the dot.com bubble would last forever; and because the military and the CIA and such were gutted. It all went boom right after Bush took office. He had to clean up the mess.

Furthermore, this current mess was also caused by the Dems in ’95 when they reinforced the CRA and Clinton essentially wiped out FHA lending requirements. Did some corporations get greedy? You bet. They found that bribing Dems paid better than actually creating wealth. Robber Baron mentality, enabled by corrupt government.

Now all you enlightened folks, having helped to put these Communists in power, will get to spend the rest of your lives trying to overcome the damage you have done to yourselves. Good luck, because soon you will live under tyranny. But who knows, maybe Iraq will liberate you some day.
~

Well, DUH! Stop rubbing salt in the wound. Let’s plan some action! I’m tired of crying. Damnit. My hub and I are seriusly contemplating not paying ANY taxes. Income tax is a travesty anyhow. Besides, if the head of the IRS can lapse on his own taxes without getting thrown in jail…well…why TF can’t we apply the same logic? We pay tax up the poop shooter! It would be nice to just say F*CK IT ALL.

Paying taxes is ‘patriotic’ as long as you’re not an elitist democrat. :(

I have had enough. It is time for us to put a stop to this nonsense. Know who the enemy is.

The enemy is not two gay guys who want a scrap of paper with the county seal declaring they are “married.”

The enemy is not some tragically confused girl taking the bad advice of professional degenerates to kill her unborn child.

The enemy is not some illiterate Oaxacan who snuck across the border to mow lawns at a business park for less than minimum wage.

The enemy is not some hippie retread without enough imagination to come up with a better plan for Saturday night (or Wednesday afternoon) than smoking a joint.

All those may be wrong, or bad examples, or annoying, or even tremendously dangerous in the long run, but they are not the enemy today. The enemy today are those people who want to take our money, our freedoms, our voices and our very futures. The enemy are the Obamas, Holders, Dodds, Franks, Peolosis and Reids (and Granholms and Gregoires) who use social issues as a distraction and a tool to get elected and then use their offices to consolidate power, wealth and position.

As Barack Obama sends billions of your dollars to ACORN to fund the next round of election fraud, as Eric Holder sets the stage to criminalize political disagreement as Hate Speech, as Nancy Pelosi prepares to silence the opposition under a revived Fairness Doctrine and forcibly unionize the country under Card Check, as all this happens, does anyone really give a fig about gay marriage? Is it the battle we need to pour our energy into? No, not today. Maybe tomorrow, if we survive, but today we have bigger threats than Heather Has Two Mommies. Even the jihadists are second-rate threats compared to letting a fifth column run our government.

If, while battling termites eating away at your house’s foundation, you discover the house has caught fire, you put away the bug spray and pick up the garden hose. Our house is on fire. We need everyone on the bucket brigade.

But dont worry, battered Americans. Obama will set it all right by battering Israel thrice as much as the Bush administration (The road map to extinction) Now that will make the Arabs happy, they will not do despicable things (like hacking a woman’s head off) anymore, and buy up USG bonds to cover for all the shortfalls produced by the trillion dollar spending spree.
But I do have one useful suggestion, really. Pull out of the ME. Entirely. Stop buying ME Oil, stop meddling in ME politics, let the chips fall where they may and let Israel deal with her enemies without repercussions. Can you call on your president to do just that?

Poor chump Eric Holder. How he mis-timed that Black History Month “Coward” speech. Should have waited a few more days and he would have had the uproar over that chimp cartoon as cover for his insult. But now that he has announced himself as the Administration’s lightening rod on that perennial concern, our need for a “Conversation on Race”, I have to ask why our first African American president saw fit to let one of his lieutenants take the lead on an issue that would naturally seem to be his own. Obviously, we’ve had black cabinet level appointees in both Republican and Democratic Administrations before. Does AG Holder have the gravitas on the race issue that naturally accrued to President Obama with his election? I doubt it, but this dodge on Obama’s part surely tells us something about the enigmatic One.

Thus far, President Obama has not taken the lead on any issue of importance. Reid and Pelosi ran the compilation of the stimulus scam, though Obama took symbolic credit with a solo signing ceremony (I believe his feckless factotum Biden was shuffling around somewhere in the background, off camera). You’d have thought Obama would have wanted his imprimatur, not just his signature, on this landmark legislation. Who runs national security and foreign policy? Bush holdovers and Clinton retreads. Obama’s decision making in this arena boils down to do whatever Bush did for now. I mean, it’s not like we’re at war or anything. Finally, AG Holder is apparently the point man on race, tasked with resolving the most divisive issue in American history. Unreal, and it begs the question: During this historic month, just exactly who is acting the coward here?

When McCain and Palin took the lead in then polls, a massive sell off occurred that sparked the crisis. Not only was $500 billion dumped in a suspicious way, on Fridays after that, massive sell offs occurred that pushed the market downward leaving us to fear all weekend long.

Some of us are hoping that there’s an investigation going on but if it was Obama’s buddies making things bad to make the present administration look worse, for political advantage, we may never know as Obama controls the FBI and CIA now.

Personally, I’ve suspected George Soros since he has repeatedly injured many national economies by selling off this way but I have zero evidence I admit.

We should know who these people were that threw a monkey wrench into the financial machinery. There should be a record. There should be names.

For partisan political purposes Obama agitated for all the cost and sacrifice of liberating Iraq to be thrown away and that the forsaken people of that country be conceded to al Qaeda and Iran. And he maintained this position even as victory was plainly in sight.

The American public ignored the obvious dangers of electing someone so lacking in judgment and character and what we seeing is the result.

TLM at #144 — yeah, the expression “Irresponsibility Bill” evoked for me Reagan’s famous formulation, about Congress as a big baby: with a ravenous appetite at one end, and no sense of responsibility at the other.

I think if every elected and appointed official in the USA was black that it still wouldn’t satisfy the likes of our new AG. I suspect most Americans, deep down, acknowledge that fact. Whatever is done for that particular group will never be enough. They will always want more and continue their cries of victimhood.

The same can be said for the “femi-nazis” as well. Advocacy groups are a beast which can never be satiated.

I believe we’ll continue to be battered until the last, white male tax payer is bled to death. I hope the victors will enjoy living in a bigger version of Zimbabwe.

…let Israel deal with her enemies without repercussions. Can you call on your president to do just that?

As the site you link to is in Hebrew, I assume you are Israeli. Understand, our president is unlikely to listen to us battered Americans on the issue your country’s security. Also, some of us are not convinced Israel can deal with her enemies, especially Iran, without our assistance. And on the whole, your security concerns and ours remain aligned. That said, your sarcasm is warranted by our new Administration’s policy of obsequious engagement with the Muslim world. Just ignore what they say and watch what they do.

Furthermore, despite all the anti-Semitic trash talk coming from the American Left, neither they nor their puppet, Barack Obama, control the issue of our special relationship with the State of Israel. That relationship still rests firmly in the hands of us battered Americans, and, like our First and Second Amendment Rights, we will not give it up willingly.

Ever notice that Obama is rarely pictured saluting marines as he boards or leaves Marine One, Air Force One? The picture also usually cuts out the marine guards themselves standing at attention and showing pride in our country.

Is Obama proud of our military or is he like the Clintons? Obama should feel shame AND guilt for his unwillingness to SHOW respect to our soldiers, our nation or the citizens he professes to represent? It is shameful that he intends to cut military spending and reduce our nuclear arsenal in a time of war. Obama’s mind set prevents him from protecting this country Obama is THE COWARD.

Ron Kean @170 – I’ve wondered much the same; Soros made a mint doing in the pound in 92; he was heavily involved in shorting the US markets immediately after 9/11; and he, along with Bill Gates and Warren Buffett were quite frank about trying to punish the US dollar by shorting it against the Euro in 2005. (FWIW, I can understand Bill “The ol’ dollar, it’s gonna go down” Gates connection, he’s a nerd, but Buffett’s participation was really quite shocking. I had a lot of respect for the guy. Anyway, they all got creamed). But Soros in particular has made no secret of his loathing for the chaotic nature of American liberty, particularly as expressed in the free markets – (as in this example from last week on Bloomberg (http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=ay0FPxGdth_k&refer=home). And one can’t forget his commitment to use his entire wealth (Washington Post, Nov 11/2003) to get rid of George Bush, or the 23 million dollars donated to anti-Bush organizations during 2003-2004 campaign.

OTOH, I don’t think the market problems during the election were so much of an active conspiracy as simply the effect of herd-thinking among second tier money (say, chattering class syncophants, or Wall St. Finance), for whom the resurgence of the notion of taking individual responsibility (embodied, say, by Sarah Palin, the left’s Great Satan) was an extreme threat. Soros’ philosophy simply provided them with a moral out to sell America short.

The net effect of course leaves people like Soros standing on top of the rubble, at least for now. He’s going to be able to wield an fair bit of power in his quest to Europeanize America, particularly with a President and Congress who are, for all intents and purposes, economically illiterate.

Markets fluctuate, but Bush was a non-factor after nov 4. The 20% drop since then is a resounding no-confidence for Obama, and it says nothing about Bush.

Time restricts, but Obama is following the failed FDR prescription. He doesn’t have a single business person in his cabinet. His entire history is anit-business, pro-socialism. He plays the class-warfare card at the drop of a hat. The “nationalize the bank” play Friday was no slip. His minions in Congress rip business at every opportunity. Putin and the chicoms are even advising him to take a sanity pill. 875B to 3.2T in wacky new spending will crowd out legitimate investment. Taxes WILL to rise because of it. He reiterated yesterday that he intends to punish the achievers. The only thing you know for sure about his Depression Stimulus is that 600,000 government jobs will be syphoning capital from the private sector. Ordinary people are permanently out of the market with this nut in charge.

1 more month of this and you might see a drop that makes Sept / Nov look like a walk in the park.

If this course doesn’t correct ASAP we could see the 90% overall drop that FDR’s little experiment in Socialism brought us.

151. mrtg and
170. Ron Kean “Forgive me if I sound like a conspiracy theorist but…

When McCain and Palin took the lead in then polls, a massive sell off occurred that sparked the crisis. Not only was $500 billion dumped in a suspicious way, on Fridays after that, massive sell offs occurred that pushed the market downward leaving us to fear all weekend long.”

Why apoligize. The better question is why isn’t anyone asking the same questions you are asking.

The most extraordinary events in financial history occured between Sep 8 and Nov 4.

1. In July, all market indicators were neutrol. PE’s, employment, CPI, volume, GDP. The only indicator of trouble were the toxic loans, which had been around for nearly a year.

2. Sep 8 was the day McCain first took the lead in the polls.

3. On Sep 8, volume jumped 60% above the prior 6 month average and remained until after the election. That had only happend one other time in 60 years.

4. From then until Oct 30, we saw the biggest drop in the Dow of any election year EVER, including the Great Depression.

5. Concurrently, oil prices crashed the most EVER.

6. On Sept 18, there was a massive run on Money Market accounts. There is some question about how large, but no question there was a very large run that caused Paulsen to issued his famous “it will take billions” quote on Sept 19.

7. and oh yes, Soros had made 2.4B shorting the market, just through June. No record yet about after that.

Again, the question is…..Since nothing like this had EVER happened before, and since it so magically coincided with Obama’s “march” to the White House, why does nobody ask what really happened?

and oh yes, one other thing……consumer credit rose 10% in 2008, even late in the year after a brief blip down. Wasn’t it supposed to be a credit crunch?

Congressional Record–Appendix, pp. A34-A35
January 10, 1963
Current Communist Goals
EXTENSION OF REMARKS OF HON. A. S. HERLONG, JR. OF FLORIDA
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
Thursday, January 10, 1963

Mr. HERLONG. Mr. Speaker, Mrs. Patricia Nordman of De Land, Fla., is an ardent and articulate opponent of communism, and until recently published the De Land Courier, which she dedicated to the purpose of alerting the public to the dangers of communism in America.
At Mrs. Nordman’s request, I include in the RECORD, under unanimous consent, the following “Current Communist Goals,” which she identifies as an excerpt from “The Naked Communist,” by Cleon Skousen:
[From "The Naked Communist," by Cleon Skousen]

CURRENT COMMUNIST GOALS

1. U.S. acceptance of coexistence as the only alternative to atomic war.
2. U.S. willingness to capitulate in preference to engaging in atomic war.
3. Develop the illusion that total disarmament [by] the United States would be a demonstration of moral strength.
4. Permit free trade between all nations regardless of Communist affiliation and regardless of whether or not items could be used for war.
5. Extension of long-term loans to Russia and Soviet satellites.
6. Provide American aid to all nations regardless of Communist domination.
7. Grant recognition of Red China. Admission of Red China to the U.N.
8. Set up East and West Germany as separate states in spite of Khrushchev’s promise in 1955 to settle the German question by free elections under supervision of the U.N.
9. Prolong the conferences to ban atomic tests because the United States has agreed to suspend tests as long as negotiations are in progress.
10. Allow all Soviet satellites individual representation in the U.N.
11. Promote the U.N. as the only hope for mankind. If its charter is rewritten, demand that it be set up as a one-world government with its own independent armed forces. (Some Communist leaders believe the world can be taken over as easily by the U.N. as by Moscow. Sometimes these two centers compete with each other as they are now doing in the Congo.)
12. Resist any attempt to outlaw the Communist Party.
13. Do away with all loyalty oaths.
14. Continue giving Russia access to the U.S. Patent Office.
15. Capture one or both of the political parties in the United States.
16. Use technical decisions of the courts to weaken basic American institutions by claiming their activities violate civil rights.
17. Get control of the schools. Use them as transmission belts for socialism and current Communist propaganda. Soften the curriculum. Get control of teachers’ associations. Put the party line in textbooks.
18. Gain control of all student newspapers.
19. Use student riots to foment public protests against programs or organizations which are under Communist attack.
20. Infiltrate the press. Get control of book-review assignments, editorial writing, policy making positions.
21. Gain control of key positions in radio, TV, and motion pictures.
22. Continue discrediting American culture by degrading all forms of artistic expression. An American Communist cell was told to “eliminate all good sculpture from parks and buildings, substitute shapeless, awkward and meaningless forms.”
23. Control art critics and directors of art museums. “Our plan is to promote ugliness, repulsive, meaningless art.”
24. Eliminate all laws governing obscenity by calling them “censorship” and a violation of free speech and free press.
25. Break down cultural standards of morality by promoting pornography and obscenity in books, magazines, motion pictures, radio, and TV.
26. Present homosexuality, degeneracy and promiscuity as “normal, natural, healthy.”
27. Infiltrate the churches and replace revealed religion with “social” religion. Discredit the Bible and emphasize the need for intellectual maturity which does not need a “religious crutch.”
28. Eliminate prayer or any phase of religious expression in the schools on the ground that it violates the principle of “separation of church and state.”
29. Discredit the American Constitution by calling it inadequate, old-fashioned, out of step with modern needs, a hindrance to cooperation between nations on a worldwide basis.
30. Discredit the American Founding Fathers. Present them as selfish aristocrats who had no concern for the “common man.”
31. Belittle all forms of American culture and discourage the teaching of American history on the ground that it was only a minor part of the “big picture.” Give more emphasis to Russian history since the Communists took over.
32. Support any socialist movement to give centralized control over any part of the culture–education, social agencies, welfare programs, mental health clinics, etc.
33. Eliminate all laws or procedures which interfere with the operation of the Communist apparatus.
34. Eliminate the House Committee on Un-American Activities.
35. Discredit and eventually dismantle the FBI.
36. Infiltrate and gain control of more unions.
37. Infiltrate and gain control of big business.
38. Transfer some of the powers of arrest from the police to social agencies. Treat all behavioral problems as psychiatric disorders which no one but psychiatrists can understand [or treat].
39. Dominate the psychiatric profession and use mental health laws as a means of gaining coercive control over those who oppose Communist goals.
40. Discredit the family as an institution. Encourage promiscuity and easy divorce.
41. Emphasize the need to raise children away from the negative influence of parents. Attribute prejudices, mental blocks and retarding of children to suppressive influence of parents.
42. Create the impression that violence and insurrection are legitimate aspects of the American tradition; that students and special-interest groups should rise up and use ["]united force["] to solve economic, political or social problems.
43. Overthrow all colonial governments before native populations are ready for self-government.
44. Internationalize the Panama Canal.
45. Repeal the Connally reservation so the United States cannot prevent the World Court from seizing jurisdiction [over domestic problems. Give the World Court jurisdiction] over nations and individuals alike.

Right on VDH! Of course you are correct in all of your statements. Thank you.
We now have CROOK TOWN in the White House and beyond. Crook Town was Chicago now it’s Washington DC and Chicago. The constant here is telling lies, lies about everything: “Oh no we won’t nationalize the banks, we won’t raise your taxes, we will create jobs and cut taxes for 95% of all Americans”. Meanwhile all of the above will take place in the negative.
We have to take back our government, shrink it back to a manageble size, limit all combined taxes to a small percentage of gross income, limit the amount of time our representatives have in Washington and the state houses. Put education back into the hands of the states. Eliminate all pac dollars and lobbyists. Prosecute all law breakers. Revise the laws based on their constitutionality before we anact another law. We must get back to teaching the classics and educate our young on the principles of freedom and those who sacrificed such much that we may maintain these freedoms. Freedom is key here and freedom isn’t free, nothing good ever is. There is a requirement now for every freedom loving individual to stand and be counted as willing enforce your rights given by our constitution.
Nothing else will do.

It is so late in this thread to be posting anything but Dr. Hansons article resonated with a ton of people ,including me . Many people on this thread expressed a sensing of “something in the air.” I agree and it feels like something I never thought Americans could ever feel again.
It feels like revolution !
We know instinctively that the solution to these matters is not going to come by a realignment politically or a new political dialog. We have been losing the argument for decades because everything is stacked against us . The law , the elections and now finally our own government. A rewriting of the script is only going to screw us again.
We know whats needed and the thought is fearful and exhilarating at the same time.
When the cancer becomes too great it must be removed.

It’s a shame that Mongoose neglected to click through to the link I posted — he might have saved himself a rather inane and unnecessary rant.

I stand as much for property rights as anyone else, and socialism is not the “new paradigm” I am seeking; far from it.

I was merely offering yet another instance in which the businessists from the Bush administration and the Fourth Circuit Court stand not for INDIVIDUALS’ freedoms and rights, but instead those of entrenched moneymaking machines that “create wealth” and “keep the lights on” at the expense of tens of thousands.

#164 Delia,
You are right! That is why I will be at the steps of the Colorado State Capitol on Friday, demonstrating with the Denver crowd at the Chicago Tea Party. If you are in the Washington area, you should look up your local activities.

You really like to paint the “Battered American” as an imbecile, don’t you?

Not knowing the history of America, not knowing that the water we drink from the Sierras to the amazing way we transformed the dustbowl into the Great American Breadbowl, was all government projects to make America great? And so she has been.

You assume that the “Battered American” doesn’t get the difference between government waste, and what the Reagen Revolution brought upon this country, from Iran-Contra illegal spending, full circle to Cheney’s no-bid contracts to Halliburton – contracts which wasted billions of dollars and cost us countless money in the disease it caused in our own soldiers who succumbed to sub-standard facilities and diseased water brought in by the very people we overpaid to take care of them.

Shame on you, for writing this as a “one month in” diatribe against a president that was lawfully elected. Shame on you, for giving voice to a non-existent “put upon American” who only has gripes against a person who just got elected.

You are one of the main reasons the American public is turning against the Republican party. You assume ignorance.. nay, you wish for it.. so you can make baseless accusations against those you disagree with, and hope to get away with it.

Speaking of ignorance. It requires a giant dose of willful ignorance to believe our government can deliver all that President Obama promised last night while simultaneously lowering the deficit.

Yes, government has done a few good big infrastructure projects, but this economy, best in the world and most upwardly mobile, was built by the sweat and blood of hard-working Americans, not government bureaucrats.

Do please read the final paragraph of Jacques Barzun’s From Dawn to Decadence. Boredom, he says, will help solve these problems, at least culturally (although he wrote his book before Lord Obama got moving really destroying the economy). Boredom will cause people to reopen old texts as the record of a fuller life, and that will, among other things, “resurrect enthusiasm in the young and talented, who keep exclaiming what a joy it is to be alive.”